“You can get clarity that other students may feel the same way you do”: exploring students’ decision-making around and motivations for engaging in evaluative talk about instructors

ABSTRACT This multimethod study was conducted to explore students’ decision-making to approach or avoid interactions with peers about instructors and investigate motivations for instructional dissent. Participants (N = 124 college students) responded to measures of instructional dissent behavior and motivations for social gossip, then responded to an open-ended question about the risks and benefits of talking about instructors with other students. Quantitative results indicated that expressive and vengeful dissent were related to the following motives for gossiping about instructors: information gathering and validation, group protection, negative influence and social enjoyment. Regression analyses revealed negative influence and group protection account for unique variance in expressive dissent, while social enjoyment and negative influence account for unique variance in vengeful dissent. Qualitative results suggest students’ decision-making to engage in interactions with other students about instructors is informed by concerns for self and others, and reflects social motivations for gossip. The implications of these findings on instructor and student communication are discussed.